


Living With You

by littlesolo



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-09
Updated: 2016-06-06
Packaged: 2018-05-19 06:10:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 2,284
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5956570
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littlesolo/pseuds/littlesolo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What had started as a place to stay for a few nights while Nat's place is being fumigated, turns into Maria and Natasha becoming room mates.  Here's a peek at their experiences under one roof in Maria's brownstone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Morning Routines

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Coffee is essential part of Maria's mornings

Maria lives in a beautiful brownstone.  The last place anyone would be looking for her and now the Black Widow as well.  

Living together has been an adjustment.  Not in terms of being around each other, that part was surprisingly easy, no it was in their shared belongings.  Liho found her way there, neither is sure how, but everything is going well, until one morning.  

There’s a groan from upstairs and Natasha smirks and goes to help Maria with her routine when it hits her.  She’d gotten back late and, for once, had decided to get a start on her paper work and report before she turned in.  To help her do that, she’d had a cup of coffee.  Specifically, the last cup of coffee.  

Maria is varies between a grump and a toddler without her coffee.  Natasha quickly checks the cabinets and pantry for more coffee or even beans she can grind, but has no luck.  Just like Maria kept vodka on hand for her, Natasha makes sure to keep coffee on hand for Maria.  Most of the time.  All except for this morning.  With yet another groan, Maria trudges her way to the coffee maker and glares at it.  

“Why isn’t this thing on and bubbling?” growls Maria.  She pokes at it in her zombie like state.  

“Umm… slight problem this morning… we’re out of coffee” announces Natasha, as gently as possible.  Maria slowly spins towards her.  The look on her face makes it clear she doesn’t understand.  She just stands there and stares for a few moments and it makes Natasha increasingly nervous.  

“What?” asks Maria finally in disbelief.  

“It’s not a problem.  We’ll just get you dressed and stop by Starbucks on the way in” adds Natasha hurriedly.  She starts to guide Maria back up the stairs.  

“No coffee?  Is it turned on?” asks a befuddled Maria as she starts to walk back down.  

“Not yet, but I promise we’ll get some soon.”  

Natasha is sure she’ll be in for it once Maria is caffeinated, but a stop at Starbucks will keep her from certain death.  


	2. Place Called Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maria does her own home renovations.

When she had been working for Stark Industries, her salary had been an outrageous amount.  Pepper had reasoned that although it wasn’t SHIELD, Maria was still dealing with international affairs and all sorts of things that gave her the type of headache that she thought only her old job could.  However, it allowed her to buy her own dream home.  

The brownstone was old and needed work but it had potential.  It was the perfect place for Maria to come home to, she throws herself into repairs to get rid of all her work stress.  

Natasha finds this out when she first comes to stay with her.  Normally, when she spends the night, she sacks out on the couch.  Since her stay would be longer, Maria insists she take the guest room.  

The guest room has various smears of color all along the walls.  Along the wall where the door is, is what Natasha calls the neutral wall.  There are various swipes of beige or grey.  The wall next to the window has a few shades of teal and lights blue, and where the closet is there are bolder colors like red, eggplant, and emerald.  

“Picking a color?” asks Natasha with a raised eyebrow.  

“Arrgh.  For about four months now.  I’ve got over twenty sample quart cans in the basement.  Tell you what, you decide on a color, even one that isn’t here, and I’ll paint it that.”  

Natasha gets used to the various patches of spackle, the rewiring, the fixing of the bathroom pipes.  She’s used to it from the times she stays Clint’s.  It’s a side of Maria she hasn’t seen before.  After standing tall at her console all day, she comes home and tries to fix the parts of this place that are falling apart.  That, and the fact that Natasha thinks Maria looks adorable in an old tee shirt and jeans with plaster dust in her hair.  Like everything, Maria makes sure the job is done right an done well.  

Since this is the home of one of SHIELD’s top ranking agents, there are also a few secrets in the wall, which is why not just any old contractor could be trusted.  When she gets in over her head, Natasha gives Clint a call and he comes and lends a hand.  The two of them working together is interesting but also hilarious. They were trying to rewire a socket in the living room and it looked like Clint had only flipped the breaker to half the room.  Maria shot across the room the second her screwdriver touched the exposed fixture.  That wasn’t the funny part.  The funny part was how fast Clint bolted downstairs when Maria recovered after the shock.  


	3. Painting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Natasha picks a room color

Natasha finally settles on a paint color.  A nice burgundy that goes with her dark wood bed frame and bookshelves.  The bookshelves she’d probably paid too much for, but they just seemed perfect.  Besides, she had Clint and Kevin carry them in for her.  

The only problem with the new paint color was that she never seemed to have the time to finish it.  They were always called away for something whether it was the job or some social gathering.  So at the moment, Natasha’s room had red in various places.  Unless she somehow found time to do at least one coat all at once, she’d be stumbling over the painting supplies in her room for sometime yet.  

Maria pops her head in one evening.  

“Nice color, I like it.  Is pizza okay for tonight?”  

“Yeah, but I might be a bit, I want to get at least a coat on.”  Maria looks around the room.  

“You haven’t taped anything or have any drop cloths.”  

“I’m a very precise painter.”  

“Whatever.  Let’s eat and then I’ll help you do the room.”  

* * *

Maria insists on doing things “properly” so Natasha’s bookshelves are covered with plastic drop cloths and the window and door frames are taped up.  While Maria proceeds to do all that Natasha continues to paint.  Maria watches as Natasha doesn’t spill a single drop.  

Maria looks over her shoulder to see Natasha painting with clean and precise strokes and simply can’t take it anymore.  

Natasha freezes.  Something cold and wet just touched her back.  It’s seeping through her shirt.  She can feel that it’s the imprint of a hand.  

“You did not” starts Natasha, but the laugh that comes from Maria confirms that she did.  There’s a struggle which ends with Maria with two stripes of paint across her cheeks and Natasha with a strip across the front of her shirt and down her arm.  The room gets done though, and it turned out the drop cloths were a good idea.   


	4. Just An Old Jacket

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Natasha finds a jacket that she remembers.

Part of their new living arrangements meant finding things about each other.  In the closet near the door, they keep jackets and coats.  During one of New York’s winter snows Natasha goes hunting for a coat to use.  She usually just takes one of Maria’s.  

She comes across an old and faded jacket.  There’s something about it, she just can’t put her finger on it.  Then she remembers.  When the Winter- when Barnes had shot her engineer, she’d called for immediate evac.  She’d been bleeding pretty bad from the hold in her side.  Maria had been one of the agents that had been on the jet to get her.  She remembers that her own jet wasn’t there due to Barnes taking care of that first.  For some reason she remembers that jacket.  There’s nothing really special about it.  It’s just a dark brown leather jacket.  But…

“Why didn’t you tell me you were there?” asks Natasha later.  Maria looks at her with a fork full of noodles half way up to her mouth.  

“What are you talking about?”

“When Nick was… I told you about my encounter with the Winter- with Barnes when he was the Winter Soldier.  You acted like you didn’t know…”  Maria swallows and then gives her a one armed shrug with the shake of head.  

“I didn’t put it together.  I was worried about Nick.  I didn’t find out he was still alive until we were on I-95.  Scared the shit outta me.  But when I remembered later, it just didn’t seem… important.”  

It had been to Natasha.  She was still gaining the trust of various people.  Some had thought she’d gotten the engineer killed on purpose.  What was a bullet wound to the Black Widow, right?  But Maria had been one of the agents to get her back safely.  She remembers the jacket, the lining being well worn and ripped in some places.  As the agent had leaned over her to secure her in the jet and try to stop the bleeding, the loose threads had brushed against her face. Maria maintains it’s just an old jacket when she mentions it.  


	5. Laundry Day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nat swipes a lot of stuff which leads to a lot on laundry day

“What the?  This…this does not work for me” mutters Maria.  

Maria’s brownstone is one of those delightfully old places that still has things like a dumb waiter and a laundry chute.  It was laundry day, and when she’d mentioned it to Nat, the other woman had simply shoved apparently every item of clothing she owned down the chute.  Maria is just about to call out to Natasha when a bunch of jeans comes down the chute and hits her in the face. 

Grumbling, she begins to sort things into piles.  That’s when she notices.  

“I was wondering where this shirt went… I know Pepper was looking for this shirt about a week ago… this is either Darcy’s or Darcy bought it for Jane.  NAT?”  There the pitter patter of light feet on the stairs and then Natasha is standing in the basement doorway.  

“Yeah?”  

“Aside from the jeans and pants, none of these clothes are actually yours.  And here I thought you only stole my stuff…”

“For the most part I do.  The other stuff I just pick up when I’m there.  Needed to get out of my gear during my lay over with Jane and Darcy, that sort of thing.”  

“Okay, then that begs the question, do you actually have any shirts of your own?”  

“A few… somewhere.  Anyway, what do you need?”  It’s then that Maria notices that Natasha must have been working out.  There’s a sheen of sweat on Natasha’s face and her hair is a bit curled from her work out…. in Maria’s long sleeve shirt.  It fits Nat like oversized yoga clothes.  Are those her leggings too? 

“Comfy?”  

“They work.”  Maria would be annoyed except for the fact that Nat looks adorable in them.  

“You have to sort your laundry by color or they wind up all blending and looking like crap.”  

“A task that would be useless if I’m going to then throw them down the chute.  Also, it _is_ mostly your laundry…”  With that Natasha makes her way back up stairs.  Maria shakes her head.  She’ll do the laundry since Nat’s agreed to do the grocery shopping.  Maybe she’ll add a watermelon and twelve pack of soda to the list just for fun.  After all, Nat likes to walk to the store.  


	6. Work and Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Home is different

Work is work and home is home.  It’s a distinction that Natasha is coming to realize when it comes to Maria.  

At home, there are mornings where Maria comes down with lint tangled in her hair from the flannel sheets she uses in the winter.  Cereal is eaten by the handful when she can’t find a bowl.  It’s a far cry from the organized Commander she usually sees behind a console or a desk on the carrier.  At home, Maria wears holes into her socks and sometimes doesn’t change out of her pajamas all day.  

Living together leads to all sorts of discoveries.  For instance, Maria knows to steer clear of Natasha’s room without Nat being there.  Well, there’s some space next to the door, but for the most part, venturing into that room isn’t safe. The few times she’s gone in alone, Liho jumped out of nowhere and scared the shit out of her, and she was just looking for a book but must have touched a taser disc.  So, now she either just sets things inside the door or waits until Nat is home.  

It’s ridiculous, but Natasha is under the impression that her sheets are softer and when Natasha gets home first, Maria tends to find her curled up in her bed. Sometimes Natasha will come home to find Kevin and Sharon watching hockey with Maria.  Hockey was one of Maria’s great loves from growing up.  It must be her Canadian side.  Natasha doesn’t quite get it but she joins them when they watch.  

Back at work, Maria is a Commander and Natasha is the Avenger waiting for an assignment.  It makes going home something to look forward to.  


	7. Plaster and paint

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Don't you dare try to touch me. You've got paint all over your hands

It's a completely different look for Maria.  Arms covered in plaster, paint, and dust.  The claw foot tub upstairs had leaked and through the ceiling.  Maria had spent the better part of two days fixing it and looks like she just finished.  There's a line of plaster down her forearm and paint up to her wrists almost.  Natasha looks up when Maria enters the kitchen.  

"Don't you dare try to touch me.  You've got  paint all over your hands" says Nat from around her coffee cup.  

"I'm lucky to be standing.  On a ladder fixing a leak that your four hour soak didn't contribute to at all..."  

"I was nearly eaten by quicksand.  I deserved that soak."  Maria rolls her eyes and rubs a streak of paint across Nat's cheek.  


End file.
